Easy Tonight
by Indigo X
Summary: Gorillaz Recalling where it all went wrong is easy... the hard part is learning to let go. PG-13 for suicide and general dark-and-oogy-ness.


Easy Tonight  
(A songfic)  
By  
Indigo X  
  
(Stuff the author says before the story: Angsty Mudscentricity from Indy. Yee. Chalk this as part of my dismal yo-yo moodiness as of late. Anywho, although my 'fics have always been heavily influenced by music, this would be my first songfic. The song in question is 'Easy Tonight' by Five for Fighting. If you haven't heard it, I recommend that you do so- very nice song, that. Anywho, yay. On with the show.  
  
Gorillaz are not mine, as much as I wish they were. Lyrics from 'Easy Tonight' are in brackets, and they're not mine either.)  
  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
You really couldn't blame him for what happened. He never meant it to happen, he never in his wildest imagination thought it would happen. He was only six, after all, and was simply trying to do right. He was a boy telling a hard yet, in his young mind, important truth to his mother. If only he knew… if only he knew that some truths are best left unsaid. If only he knew that Celine Niccals, unbeknownst to everyone, was teetering on an emotional brink, and it would only take one hefty swat of bad news to knock her over the edge.  
  
If only he had known. Then, maybe, there would be no vast, secret ocean of sorrows hidden behind defiant, yet constantly mournful, garnet and obsidian eyes. Maybe there wouldn't be so many barbed, poisonous thorns piercing a golden, yet well-hidden heart. And maybe, just maybe, there'd be no silent tears, shed in the dark while he slept because he'd never let them out otherwise.  
  
If only he had known… maybe Murdoc wouldn't have to bear so much pain behind his veil of cool, rock star's indifference.  
  
{You were wrong, You were right  
You are gone Tonight  
You were free, So alive  
You were wrong, You were right   
You were down, You could see  
You wore hearts for me  
You were sharp, Sharp as knives  
You were wrong, You were right}  
  
  
Six years old he was that summer, still a stranger to the world, still mostly untouched by all the harsh bits of reality that most grownups have to deal with. It was getting late, the sun was just starting to go down, and he was riding his bike to see if he could catch his Daddy halfway home from work. He was also keeping an eye out for his older brother Hannibal, who was most likely out getting into some sort of trouble. He always came home for dinner looking like he'd been in a fight. Murdoc stuck his tongue out as he thought of his big, rough bully of a brother. He could be okay sometimes, but mostly he was just a lousy git.  
  
The tires of the bicycle bumped along the cracks in the sidewalk, making gross yet satisfying 'crunch' noises whenever they happened to run over a beetle that was too slow to get out of the way. Squinting his red-and-black eyes as the late afternoon sun flashed into them from between thick-foliaged maple branches, he made out the form of his Daddy's car a ways up the road, parked under a tree. That's odd, he thought, why did Daddy park so far away from home? Is he having some kind of car problems? Grinning his jagged little grin at the thought of possibly helping tinker with the car, Murdoc pedaled faster, getting closer to the car… and slammed on his bike brakes about 15 feet from the vehicle, a very confused expression on his face.  
  
His Daddy was in the backseat of the car, kissing with a woman. Murdoc bit his lip- he was still very young and didn't know all that much about love and marriage, but he was pretty sure that you weren't supposed to kiss like that- with tongues and all- with somebody else if you were married. And the lady in the car definitely wasn't Mummy- Mummy had long, raven hair, this lady was a flaming redhead. Daddy was being very bad. As fast as he could, Murdoc turned the bike around and rode home as fast as he could. He'd seen something he wasn't supposed to. He needed some comfort, some release RIGHT NOW, and both comfort and release were leaning patiently against the footboard of his bed in the form of a black Fender bass. He just needed to strum a little, that's all, and then he'd know what to do.   
  
{Shot down… said you never had the chance,  
Took a ride on a suicide romance  
Could have sworn there was somebody home,  
To facilitate the great unknown  
Woman, I ain't going to meet you anywhere  
Don't know where I'm going yet,  
But I sure am getting there…   
  
Shotgun fire… anybody home?  
I got two dimes in the telephone  
Alright… It's not easy tonight.}  
  
  
Mummy was cooking dinner, pot roast and sweet potatoes, when Murdoc breezed in through the kitchen door and thumped up the stairs to his room, grabbed his bass, and just started playing, searching for some sort of guidance. He'd received the instrument for his birthday, and he'd caught onto it very quickly- as if he'd known how to play it since he was born. After playing for a bit, he realized what he had to do. He had to tell Mummy what he saw. It wouldn't be easy, but it was the Right Thing To Do, as he was pretty sure Daddy wasn't going to tell her. Maybe if Mummy gave Daddy a Stern Talking-To, and Daddy said he was sorry, then everything would be okay. At least, that's how it worked whenever Hannibal was bad. So, gritting his teeth, Murdoc went back downstairs with a resounding thump-thump of navy blue Converse All-Star high-top sneakers against floor.   
  
"Up and down, up and down! Murdoc, are you being a yo-yo, or just a herd of elephants stomping up and down those stairs?" Mummy turned from the sweet potatoes she was stirring and playfully scolded the boy. "What're you doing back, luv? Thought you were goin' to meet your Daddy."  
  
"Um… I was, Mummy." Dang, this was going to be tougher than he thought. "I found 'im… but he, um… kinda had his… um, hands full. Yeah." He looked down at the toes of his sneakers, sighed, and told Mummy everything- the parked car, the red haired lady, the tongue kissing.  
  
He was sorry he said it the moment he finished talking.  
  
Mummy dropped the spoon onto the floor, sending hot little orange spatters flying a little ways. Her pretty face was wrenched in a shocked, sad expression. She knelt down, put her hands on the boy's shoulders, and looked him in the face. "Murdoc. Are you positively sure that's what you saw? Absolutely sure, without the tiniest bit of doubt?"  
  
He wanted to say no, take back everything he said and just say 'Oops, actually, I think it was somebody else, sorry to make you worry', but he'd started telling the truth, and now he had to see it through. "Um… yeah, Mummy. I'm sure."  
  
Mummy's dark eyes were like broken glass as she nodded sadly, picked up her spoon, and slowly rose. She washed the spoon off and mechanically got back to stirring the potatoes, and told Murdoc in a flat voice, completely devoid of its usual humor and sparkle, to go wash up because dinner was almost ready. He nodded and went upstairs, looking in the mirror as he washed his hands and telling the small, skinny black-haired boy staring back at him that he hoped he had done the right thing.  
  
{You were bound, You were free  
You wear black for me  
You were dark, Dark as night  
You were wrong, You were right…}   
  
There was a tension in the air over dinner. Daddy was acting as normal, trying to keep up a façade of innocence and normality, Hannibal was just eating as fast as he could so he could go back out with his friends and put flaming bags of dog doo on old people's porches, Murdoc couldn't look his Daddy in the face, and Mummy was unusually silent.   
  
Hannibal left abruptly without even clearing his place setting. Not that unusual. But with his exit, the tension seemed to grow even more palpable, until Mummy set her fork down a little too firmly and smiled a little too tightly at Murdoc. "Honey, why don't you go upstairs or go outside and play? I need to talk to Daddy alone for a while. Don't worry about your dishes, I'll get them tonight."  
  
Murdoc nodded and went upstairs, flopped back on the bed, and plucked idly at his bass for a while. He could vaguely hear his parents downstairs, their voices muffled. Then, as time gradually passed, their voices grew louder and louder until he could make out words. Angry, scary words- 'cheating' and 'infidelity', 'divorce', and lots of four-letter words thrown and caught like bee stings. Then he heard door slamming, followed by crying.  
  
He was very sorry he'd said anything.  
  
{Shot down… said you never had the chance,  
Took a ride on a suicide romance  
Could have sworn there was somebody home  
To facilitate the great unknown  
But woman, I ain't going to meet you anywhere  
Don't know where I'm going yet…But I sure am getting there   
  
Shotgun fire… anybody home?  
I got two dimes in the telephone,  
Alright… It's not easy tonight…}   
  
  
The next day, Murdoc dried off the dishes from breakfast and put them away, standing on a chair to reach the cabinets that he wasn't tall enough to reach on his own. Hannibal was at school, and Daddy was at work, and Mummy had made them both chocolate-chip French toast for breakfast, with bacon and apple juice. She had been trying to be cheerful, but Murdoc could tell she was mostly faking it. They had talked some, both being careful to avoid the topic of the Very Bad Thing, and afterward, Mummy had held him very close, kissed his forehead, and told him that, no matter what, she loved him very much. Then she sighed, smiled sadly, and said she was going to take a hot bath. She said she would feel much better afterwards.  
  
It was about two hours later that Murdoc got a prickly feeling that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He put his crayon down and looked around, wide-eyed, like a nervous fawn. Something didn't feel right.  
  
"Mummy?"  
  
No answer. The house seemed eerily silent. Outside, a brief, late summer breeze blew by, a car or two drove past, and birds twittered idly. Putting his drawing aside, Murdoc slipped through the house, calling for his Mummy, searching all over the place but finding nothing.   
  
"Mummy?"  
  
Still no answer. The silence was deafening. Something… was very, very wrong.  
  
The bathroom. Maybe Mummy had fallen asleep in the bathtub- she HAD said she was going to take a bath, didn't she? Slowly, Murdoc turned the doorknob and pushed the bathroom door open…  
  
{She's in.   
Over my head…  
And it's not easy,   
It's not easy tonight …}  
  
"MUMMY!"  
  
Lifeless eyes, dark as night, stared up through pink-tinted water. Raven hair floated limply about like seaweed, and an alabaster arm hung over the side of the tub, dripping ruby onto white linoleum. A razor, its silver blade screaming guilty crimson, lay just inches from limp fingers.  
  
In a blind panic, Murdoc pulled his Mummy's head above the water and shook her, screaming and crying, trying to get her to wake up. But it was far too late for that. All the little boy could do was gently push her eyes closed, curl up in a little ball in the corner formed by the wall and the side of the tub full of reddish water and lifeless mother, and weep as if his heart was breaking.  
  
And that was how Daddy found him when he got home.  
  
  
{Shotgun fire… anybody home?  
I got two dimes in the telephone,  
Alright… It's not easy tonight…. }  
  
  
Daddy had never come right out and said it, but Murdoc knew that Daddy blamed him for what had happened. As a result, he was, for as long as he lived in Stoke, mostly ignored by his father. What little words spoken were clipped and curt, if not downright degrading. Hannibal stopped being 'okay' and started being downright brutish, beating up on the smaller boy whenever he could.  
  
That one event, that one confession of a witnessed sin, was a Catalyst. A Catalyst that set in motion years of pain and misery, the constant pain of being someone's personal punching bag, the slow torture of knowing your only surviving parent dosen't give a damn. It had embittered him terribly, to the point where he decided that the only surefire way to avoid any sort of pain or heartbreak was to simply stop giving a damn himself. When you love nothing, nothing can hurt you. Simple.  
  
Well, almost nothing.   
  
He poured all of his love into his bass. He knew he had nothing to fear from the black Fender, his one true and loyal companion. The bass became his everything, until the music that issued forth from its strings was nothing less then the haunting voice of his own wounded soul. And it was with this music that Murdoc, along with three others he'd gotten together with under very odd (to say the least) circumstances, achieved what he'd dared to dream of all his life- Rock Stardom.  
  
But now, twenty-nine years to the day, the shock and the pain of the original Bad Bad Thing, the Catalyst, still stings fresh in his heart. He's tried to shake it, tried to let it go, and he's come pretty close. He can play and not think about it, drink and not think about it, smoke and not think about it, have some fun with a bird or two and not think about it… but tonight, he can't not think about it. He lies on his bed, staring at the ceiling with a bottle in his hand and a fag in his lips, smoke curling upward, and it's all he can think about.  
  
"Oi, Mum…"  
  
Temporarily forgetting about it could almost be easy any other day… but, oh, man, it isn't easy tonight.  
  
{You were free…Now you're not…You were free…} 


End file.
